Quaif while thou canst: another race,⁠When thou and thine, like me, are sped,
May rescue thee from earth's embrace,⁠And rhyme and revel with the dead.

6.

Why not? since through life's little day⁠Our heads such sad effects produce;
Redeem'd from worms and wasting clay,⁠This chance is theirs, to be of use.

Newstead Abbey, 1808. [First published in the seventh edition of Childe Harold.]

↑[Byron gave Medwin the following account of this cup:—"The gardener in digging [discovered] a skull that had probably belonged to some jolly friar or monk of the abbey, about the time it was dis-monasteried. Observing it to be of giant size, and in a perfect state of preservation, a strange fancy seized me of having it set and mounted as a drinking cup. I accordingly sent it to town, and it returned with a very high polish, and of a mottled colour like tortoiseshell."—Medwin's Conversations, 1824, p. 87.]